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Monday, 29 December 2014

It is impossible to
preach a homily on today’s feast of the Holy Family that does not offend the
modernist Catholic and the atheist who expect to have the manufactured,
alternative living units of today’s society accepted as ‘family’ by the Church.
It comes as something of a relief then, when one is given a Bishops Letter to
read, because any praise or criticism can be met with the same response –“Why
don’t you write to the Bishop and tell him how it has affected you?” I don’t
think any will, of course, and as yet I have heard neither criticism nor
praise. Rather, there has been a remarkable silence. Here is Bishop Cunningham’s
Pastoral Letter to the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle:

My Dear People

I once saw a statue of the Holy Family carved from a single piece of
wood. The

figures rose from the same base, Joseph standing with his arm
protectively round

Mary’s shoulder. Mary, carved out of his sleeve, sits cradling the child
Jesus. It was

an icon of unity that made me ask the question “What is it that binds The
Holy

Family together?”

As I looked for answers I contemplated the individual members of the
family. Mary’s

“Yes” to God had brought the child Jesus into the world. Joseph’s “Yes”
to God had

made him take Mary as his wife and look after the child Jesus. Jesus’
humility in

saying “Yes” to God in the temptations, and in the Garden of Gethsemane,
led him

to the cross where he won our salvation. This family was united in
accepting the will

of God.

Sadly, we often dismiss the Holy Family because we see them as too
perfect, too far

beyond us. The Church needs to be careful when it points to the Holy
Family as the

ideal as it could be an obstacle. When ordinary people compare their own
poor

experience of family life, its weaknesses and divisions with this ideal
it can lead to a

sense of failure and despair. We need to look, more carefully at what
scripture tells

us about the Holy Family, then, we may find that it actually addresses
our divisions

and weakness and becomes a source of hope.

There were divisions within the Holy Family. Joseph was minded to divorce
Mary.

Jesus upsets his parents when he stays behind in the temple. Mary rebukes
Jesus

because of the distress she and Joseph suffered as they tried to find
him. An upset

between husband and wife, a wilful teenager, a distressed mother rebuking
her

child, are all situations which are common to our experience. What is
important

about the Holy Family is that they seek to resolve these problems. That
is where we

need to learn from them.

Their problems are resolved by recourse to prayer which asks the Holy
Spirit to help

them see what the will of God is. In each case they affirm and support
one another

by first, saying “Yes” to God and then to each other. Where there is no
immediate

understanding they hold it before God. “Mary pondered all these things in
her heart.” What unites the Holy Family is their willingness to listen to the
Holy Spirit

and to use his help to obey God; in our weakness we must do the same.

Pope Francis at the recent Extraordinary Synod on the family has reminded
us that

there are all kinds of families and relationships in today’s world. Many
are unsettled,

broken or in other difficulties and all need to be approached with
compassion. He

criticised the Church for sometimes being too judgemental in its
approach. He

reminded us that the Church, called to be the family of God, is called to
exhibit

compassion and mercy within its own membership. It can only do this by
allowing

the Holy Spirit to fill it with the burning love and mercy of God. This
will seek to

bring healing and reconciliation within the family of the Church. But it
will go much

further than this as it drives the Church to reach out to those on the
fringes of

society, seeking to understand them and share the gospel of hope.

The process in our Diocese called “Forward Together in Hope” which is
just

beginning, is a three year period to help us discover what it is to be
the Family of

God in Hexham and Newcastle. It must be rooted in prayer to allow the
Holy Spirit

to draw us closer together in understanding and love. If we are to grow
spiritually

we need to understand ourselves, our needs and weakness. We have to
recognise

the gifts our community has to offer the wider Church. In the same way we
need to

understand others, their needs and weaknesses and we must not be too proud
to

accept their gifts.

If we do this we will grow together in unity, renewing the Church as the
Family of

God and moving forward in hope to bring his kingdom on earth as it is in
heaven.

Sunday, 28 December 2014

We had the expected
good turnout for our Christmas Masses, where I spoke about Christmas having a
romantic feel with carols, a story of angels and shepherds, and the sharing of
gifts between family and friends, but noted too that Christmas has a more
significant message than romance or even family: it is about Redemption. The
babe in the manger is God-made-man, come to die with us and for us that we might be saved from our sins. We sing about
the babe in the manger being ‘wrapped in swaddling bands’ not realising we are
singing about nappies (diapers!); of a God who has humbled Himself to the
wearing of nappies so as to die on a cross for you, and for me.

Our Church and our Christmas Crib

I noted that we
should of course value the family as the bedrock of society, and enjoy the time
spent with our own family. After love of God, we should love our families most
of all, because it is there we learn to share; to give and take, to be just and
compassionate. If there are divisions, we should try to heal them, and so enjoy
the love and peace that Christmas promises.

That said, one of my
regular parishioners told me yesterday that her wayward child said “I’ve come
to Mass and Christmas dinner because Christmas is about family, but I don’t
believe in God because I can’t see Him. Anyway, science knows so much about how
the world works that we don’t need to believe in God”. I wondered how many of
those sitting in our congregation would say the same thing, and pointed out
that her daughter was speaking as a materialist: someone who believes in only
what she can see and touch and measure, and who places her faith in the limited
endeavour we call science.

Let’s take ‘not
seeing God’ first. What we mean by ‘seeing’ is ‘something we can measure with a
ruler; weigh in scales, touch with the hand, describe according to shape,
colour and texture’. The person who
believes only in such material things is destined to live a sad and cynical
life because they will never be able to believe in love, love being something
we cannot see, touch, or measure; ithas
no size, shape, colour, weight, length, height or width. If this girl only
believes in what she sees, she can never believe in love, or peace, or justice;
in joy, in happiness or even sadness, because these are emotions, and emotions have
no shape, size, colour or weight: like God, they cannot be seen or touched.
We can experience emotions, but not see them; we can observe their effects, but
not touch them. The same is true of God: we can experience God in prayer if we
are truly open to Him; and we can see the effects of God in the lives of the
saints. This girl’s refusal to follow God is more honestly the refusal to submit to God; she wants to live life following her
own desires without any boundaries of behaviour except those she chooses for
herself. It is a completely selfish way to live, and often results in one being
an unlikeable person.

As for saying “Science
knows so much about how the world works that we don’t need to believe in God”,
there is as much sense in that as in saying “we know so much about how a car
works that we don’t need to believe in car manufacturers”. None of what we know
about how a car works proves the car was not manufactured (made) and designed,
nor does knowing about physics, biology or chemistry mean we don’t need to
believe in God who manufactured (created) the world. The girl is using the
false idea that science and religion are opposing forces when in fact they are
complementary forces: science tells us how
the world works and how it was
created, religion tells us why it was
created. How and Why are completely different questions, they focus on
different aspects of the one reality; only if science and religion were asking
the same question and giving different answers could they be seen as
contradictory. But they actually ask different questions, and as such can never
truly be in conflict.

It is true that
religion has conflict with individuals who have a kind of religious scientism;
an attitude of “whatever we can do, we should do”. Thus they say “we can create
animal-human hybrids, so we should; we can clone, so we should; we can
contracept, so we should; we can abort, so we should; we can euthanize, so we
should”. But just because we can do something does not mean we should. Whether
we should or should not do something is a moral
question; and morals are non-physical
truths, so they are outside the boundaries of science which can deal only
with the physical things of the world (its physics, chemistry and biology).

That this girl has
come through Catholic schooling and gained an A grade in Religious Studies yet knows nothing about the complimentarity of
faith and reason, or have any idea about the limits of materialism, is an
indictment not of the girl but of Catholic education and the syllabus we have
given our teachers to teach. If Christmas means nothing to this girl in its
reality of God-made-man for her salvation, who is to blame? Is it her, for
following her own selfish desire to live without religious moral boundaries, or
is it the negotiating-indulging parenting style of today and the schooling she
received which taught her to “do what is right for you”? Both are to blame, I
think. Yet the greatest responsibility lies with the Bishops for not ensuring
that what is taught in our schools and preached from our pulpits is good, solid
catechesis rather than subjective, relativist intellectualism, simply for the
sake of looking intelligent to the secularised masses. Taught to our children, solid,
faithful Catechesis could have truly evangelised the parents. How many lost
souls the Bishops and priests of the last fifty years may have to account for
when they face God.

Saturday, 20 December 2014

Following
years of protests by smokers that they are being marginalised and oppressed by
society, the Government’s Principal Physician yesterday called upon all health
workers to support the right of smokers to smoke in public places and not to
refuse them lifesaving medicine. This would see the return of the right to
smoke in pubs and places of work, as well as allowing smoking in patient’s Day
Rooms on hospital wards. In his statement he said that physicians are not
called to judge those who smoke or set limits to places where smoking is
allowed, because that would be to restrict smokers’ freedom of choice: “Just because we have the knowledge that
smoking is seriously damaging to one’s health does not mean we have to restrict
a person’s freedom to choose, or force a lifestyle upon them that is not to
their taste. We are called to get alongside those whose lifestyles are damaging
their health, and we cannot get alongside them if we are criticising their
lifestyle.” Although a few physicians have raised their voices against the
call, many more have taken it up for reasons of compassion and
non-judgementalism. Said one Consultant, “It
is notoriously hard to give up smoking; our job is not to prevent smoking but
to heal those damaged by it.” Many patients, especially smokers, are
voicing the same opinion, saying this is a matter of free choice and that what
we need from the NHS is compassion, not exclusion.

Those
who disagree have stated that to have knowledge on how damaging smoking is and
not educate the public or uphold the ban on public smoking is to do the very
opposite of what health practice aims at: the promotion of health: “It is hypocritical and wrong to have
life-saving knowledge on the damage done by smoking and yet promote the right
of people to actively engage in that damaging behaviour. It makes us hypocrites
and is, in fact, totally lacking in compassion. True compassion lives by
reality; it does not ignore reality.” The debate continues, and while some are
calling for smoking to be given the right to promotion and free public
indulgence despite the dangers to health, adversaries point out that to know
what kills and yet seek to promote it is to fail as a health practitioner and
positively endanger those for whom one is called to care.

The
above is a spoof story, of course, but reflects what is happening in the Church
on the issues of sexual ethics where high-ranking voices in the Church are
proclaiming an ‘age of mercy’ in which we ‘get alongside’ those living
destructive sexual behaviours and lifestyles. Yet there is no mercy in this;
rather, there is an abandoning of truth to accommodate lifestyles that damage
and kill the soul; an abandoning of the Lord’s sheep for the sake of acceptance
by the wolf pack –which only seeks to break down the walls of the pen so as to
scatter and devour the sheep. Let us pray the leaders of the Church do not succumb to the
devil’s manipulation of the Truth. True
mercy must indeed be exercised and true accompaniment of those in destructive
lifestyles must occur, but in such a way that they are helped to move beyond
those lifestyles rather than be affirmed in them. Meanwhile, as I have said
before, persons in harmful lifestyles are always welcome (even encouraged) to
attend Mass, to continue in the life of prayer; to seek spiritual direction and
to take part in the social and charitable activities of the Church. Such
persons cannot claim to be excluded from the Church; they can only truthfully
claim that they are ‘unable to receive Holy Communion until such time as we end
our lifestyle choice in favour of one consistent with the Ten Commandments’,
-the Commandments by which God has made known the criteria by which He judges
us (Deut.4v39-40; 6v1; Matt.5v14; 19v1-22). Keep on praying for the 2015 Synod; that minds
and hearts may be open to the truth and not to relativism and false, damaging
‘compassion’.

Most Holy Trinity,

from whom all families take their origin and
meaning,

we pray for the exaltation of our Holy Mother the
Church:

and especially for the forthcoming Synod on the
Family:

open minds and hearts to the Gospel of Christ;

and to the place of marriage & family in your
plan for our salvation.

Help your holy Church,

and the world in which she
lives,

to uphold the sanctity of human life from natural
conception to natural death;

the rightfulness of natural marriage,

and to find grace-filled solutions to the breakdown
of marriage and family life.

Seeking the intercession of Our Blessed Lady, of St
Joseph her spouse,

Wednesday, 17 December 2014

Here is a video of the Missa Cantata organised by the hopeful Juventutem group in Durham for the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, as referred to in Father Dickson's post below (see here). Enjoy!

Tuesday, 16 December 2014

‘The
Church of Nice’ is those catholics who reduce the faith to simply being nice to
everyone; not correcting them on their lifestyle choices but rather telling
them that God loves them ‘as they are’ and ‘where they are at’; that they have
a friend in Jesus.

In
today’s Ordinary Form Gospel the Lord tells us ‘tax collectors and sinners are
making their way into the kingdom of God’ before many a religious soul. This
must be a favourite text of the Church of Nice, which wants to say that no
matter what a soul’s treacherous
activity towards their own people; no matter how immoral they are in sexual
activity, such souls are making their way into haven, so ‘Who am I to judge?’. Another text much loved by the Church of Nice
is ‘I do not call you servants any longer, but friends’. These texts, along
with ‘Do not judge, and you shall not be judged yourselves’, allow the Church of
Nice catholic to reduce Catholicism to simply being nice to people and
‘non-judgmental’; it allows them to be humanists with a religious veneer. But it allows it only because they take these
texts out of context; to the loss of the fullness of their meaning.

Take
today’s Gospel. Why is it that Tax collectors and prostitutes are making their
way into the Kingdom of heaven? It is, Our Lord says, because they listened to the message of John the Baptist and believed
in him; they repented and did not continue actively indulging in treachery
or immoral sex. Rather, they converted and left their sinful ways behind. This
is conveniently forgotten by the Church of Nice.

As
for the texts on friendship, remember this: ‘you are My friends if you do what I command you’ (Jn 15v14) –and there are Ten
Commandments to be followed, including Thou shalt not steal; Thou shalt not
commit adultery and Thou shalt not kill. Yet the Church of Nice refuses to call
cohabitation, contraception, re-marriage after civil divorce and same-sex
activity sinful. That would not be nice. Instead, they tell such folk that
Jesus loves them ‘where they are at’; that they ‘have a friend in Jesus’. No
reference to Our Lord’s rejoinder ‘you are my friends if you do what I command you’. That would be harsh; it would be to
judge.

Yet
even ‘Do not judge’ is not the full story. We are actually called to take the
plank out of our own eye first, so
that we can see where to help our neighbour: “first take the plank out of your
own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the splinter out of your
brother's eye’. This text is not a proscription against judgement; it is a call
to judge ourselves so we can help others see their sins.

It
is true that God alone judges a soul (He knows far more about each individual
soul than we do) but He does not forbid us to judge if our own life is in order,
and He actually requires us to judge circumstances and acts. He tells us both
when to judge (after having taken the plank from our eye) and how (‘judge with
right judgement’). Most people know ‘do not judge’ but many are shocked to hear
that Our Lord also said to ‘judge with right judgement’: it isn’t much heard
from pulpits today –if at all.

The
Church of Nice is in reality the handiwork of Satan; it refuses to call a spade
a spade; to call sin ‘sin’ and call souls to conversion of lifestyles and
attitudes. It takes a truth and distorts it, just as Satan took the truth in
the garden of Eden that we are made in God’s image to say we can be more like
Him if we eat of the Tree of knowledge. Thus the Church of Nice leaves sinners acting
in ways and situations which are deleterious to their eternal salvation, which
is not ‘nice’ but the work of the devil.

Judging
must be carefully done. I tell the folk when they hear theft, violence, deceit abortion,
contraception, homosexuality etc, discussed, to stay with “I” statements: ‘I couldn’t do that’; or ‘I can’t accept that’, because these statements
judge no one but invite the question ‘Why not?’ We can then give the answer that
proclaims the Truth while judging no one. We have, on the other hand, stood up
for the Faith and proclaimed Truth –which has a power of its own. It is not
enough to destroy false argument; the Truth must also be proclaimed.

Sadly,
the folk of the Church of Nice judge no one and nothing except those that uphold the Truth –when they become decidedly not nice
and very condemning. I often wonder if it is because they have such sin
within themselves or their own past (which of us does not?) that it is easiest
to proclaim ‘no judgment’. And while they may say every Sunday ‘I believe in Jesus
Christ...He will come again to judge the living and the dead’, can they be putting
their heart into it? And can they put their heart into saying they believe in
One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church?

Wednesday, 10 December 2014

We are often told that Catholic children prior to Vatican II
didn’t know the bible. These very young children from the inner city of Dublin
in the 1950’s show this assumption to be quite wrong. In fact, the stories of
the scriptures were made very much alive for them by their inspirational
teacher, Miss Peg Cunningham, who recorded their story telling on a then new-fangled reel-to-reel tape recorder, saying the children were on the radio. This was a
ploy but fifty years later the tapes were discovered and were indeed played on
the radio, which brought film makers to add cartoons and realise them –and for which
they won an academy award.

In the videos the children tell the tale of John The Baptist, and that of the Annunciation, the Visitation and the Nativity (all quite suitable for Advent). The
children speak of St Elizabeth's house being “further away than Oliver Plunkett’s head –further
than the whole excursion!”. This refers to the fact that the teacher had taken
them on pilgrimage to see Oliver Plunkett’s head and in those days travel took longer.
The Nativity story focuses on the shepherds, the wise men and the ‘shocking holy temper’ of Herod.
A whole series of these films is available on DVD from http://www.brownbagfilms.com/work/give-up-yer-aul-sins. I highly recommend them not only for their entertainment value, but as a demonstration
of how to make the stories of the bible come alive for children.

Tuesday, 9 December 2014

Yesterday
evening I attended the Missa Cantata for the solemnity of the Immaculate
Conception organised by the Durham Chapter of Juventutem. It was celebrated, with
permission from the local Dominicans who have care of the Durham parish of St
Cuthbert, by Father Bede Rowe of ‘A Chaplain Abroad’.

I
and others I spoke to were impressed by the proficiency of the servers who had no practice at all, and the
quality of the singing, the singers having had but scant practice just before Mass. Both he serving team and the singers included members of the Durham Juventutem group, the singers also having members of the student body of Durham University. They were aided and supported by a
fine young organist. There was a good number in the congregation and the Buffet
afterwards was enjoyed by all, along with great company! I sat in choir for the
Mass, along with Father Paul Tully, Catholic chaplain to the local Durham Hospitals.

Having
seen how these young people love what they were doing, and the older members of the
congregation supporting them, I have to say that for the life of me I cannot
understand why there is continued resistance to the Church’s ancient liturgy. Several
young people spoke to me in the following Buffet saying they had never attended
an Extraordinary Form Mass and asked why it was not more commonly available. One
young lady however, had the same reaction I did many years ago when I first
attended a TLM: it was all done on the sanctuary and the people did little or nothing.
I told her my own story of having only come to appreciate the TLM only after
several attendances by which time I had come to value the silence and the
permission it gives to pray in my own words from my own heart rather than make programmed
responses. She did, however, say she liked what she saw (she had an advantage
over me in that my first few attendances were at low Masses said in a hotel
room back in 1980!)

I
think it is time that the EF was not be simply allowed by the Church but actively promoted in order that we allow the Holy Spirit to show us which
Form allows Him to reach the human heart more readily. It is not enough to
permit the TLM: permission can be a neutral stance. What we need is for the
Church’s liturgical treasure be valued and positively promoted, rather than grudgingly
tolerated.

Thursday, 4 December 2014

Ever since coming to this parish I have instructed First Holy
Communion children on the how and the why of to receiving kneeling and on the
tongue. They happily follow this for a while then suddenly begin to stop to receive
standing and on the hand. I don’t think this is because they think it is the adult
method, because a number of adults receive kneeling and on the tongue. Rather,
I suspect it is instruction from parents and grandparents who do not like to
receive on the tongue ‘de-instructing’ the children. That they cannot humble
themselves to ‘stick their tongue out’ as they describe it, nor bend the knee,
is an attitude they should not be forming their children in. But there is much
prejudice about all the Traditional liturgical forms.

It is possible to invite clergy to attend the Extraordinary Form
in choir and to receive a polite ‘no thank you’ simply because they have had a
prejudiced view of the Extraordinary Form given by the seminary. In our time we
(late eighties, early nineties) were told ‘the Old Mass was priest-centred; a
nonsense in that the priest was saying something quietly while the choir was singing;
bad to have one’s back to the people and use a language they didn’t
understand’. These prejudices were then handed on to the people, and still
thrive.

Why was the Traditional Form the subject of such negative,
disparaging talk? The answer is simple: when
you have had something you have extolled for nigh on two thousand years it has
to be criticised in the sharpest of terms in order to justify putting it in the
bin. Now if the New Rite is so superior to the Old it would have naturally
displaced the Old; I believe that the New Form was imposed because they knew it
would not be chosen freely at the time. It is also true that the Church could
not forbid what she had declared sacred for century upon century without saying
she cannot be trusted liturgically, for by saying this she automatically undercuts
promotion of her new liturgical form too.

The criticisms levelled against the Old Form are in fact
completely wrong: the new form is much more priest-centred in that he faces the
people, engages with them as an entertainer -even his chair replaces the
tabernacle at the apex of the sacred space. As for saying something quietly while
the choir was singing, this provides for the Mass to be a symphony of voices,
while ‘having one’s back to the people’ is actually leading from the front,
like a Drum major uniting the band behind him. As for using a language the folk
did not understand, most Catholics did know
Latin: they learned it at school, and in any case, use of a sacred language for
worship is a mark of the great religions: Judaism using Hebrew; Islam using Arabic,
Christianity using Latin.

Simply put, the negative ‘Frame of Reference’ used by those who
disparage the Old Form of Mass needs to be challenged and corrected.

Tuesday, 2 December 2014

Three
years ago Andrew (the ‘Tie’ of this blog), two teenage girls (Rachel and Miriam)
and a young man from Durham University, were ready to establish themselves as a
Juventutem Chapter. Seeking a Church with good access they contacted the
Cathedral, well supplied by bus routes, trains and the Metro system. Sadly the
Cathedral was unable to accommodate them by reason of ‘lack of resources’ and because
they ‘already have a prayer group catering for the youth’. They then requested
the chapel in the Metro Centre shopping mall which was offered and accepted.
They were just about to go ahead when the Diocese closed the chapel. They
decided to wait until clergy moves were made before trying again.

In
August this year, commenting on a post on a post on Fr Brown’s ‘Gateshead Revisited’ about
a possible Juventutem chapter in Gateshead, I noted that that Andrew was planning
another attempt and wondered if we should get our young men (Andrew and Philip
Dillon) together. Philip saw this and contacted me via this blog. Gateshead also
being well supplied with bus routes and the Metro system Philip, along with Mr
and Mrs Armstrong, saw the possibility of establishing themselves as a group with
support from the LMS Reps (Mr and Mrs O’Neil) and Fr Brown. For the glory of God and the good of the youth their chapter was thus
established. Our Diocese being long in length however (stretching from the Scottish
Border to Middlesbrough) it makes good sense to have two Juventutem chapters,
one for the more Northern in Gateshead, and one in Durham for the more Southern
end of the Diocese. As such Andrew and Paul Duffy, another of our Thornley
parishioners, arranged an enquiry meeting at St Cuthbert’s Durham, to set up a Chapter
there. Seven people came together to form the core group and it has now met
three times. We are thus a Diocese blest with two Juventutem Chapters, one in
the County of Tyne & Wear and one in Durham County. It remains possible for
more Chapters to be established within parishes, but this requires more active support
from the clergy than is generally found.

That
we have two Juventutem Chapters in the Diocese must say something about the
attachment of young people to Traditional Liturgy, Spirituality and Catechesis.
Besides H&N, perhaps only The Westminster Diocese is at present likely to
have multiple chapters, but I’m sure that at more will achieve it as the
movement grows. That H&N has two chapters in two of its counties is a great
witness to those folk (and to those Bishops) who, in regard to ministering to
the youth, dismiss the usefulness of the TLM and the Church’s liturgical and
spiritual Tradition. This unfortunately leaves many of our youth in a position
of being unable to gain awareness of or access to their liturgical and
spiritual heritage.

Andrew’s
post describing the beginning of the Durham Juventutem Chapter is linked below
for your edification. You will see that the group not only promotes the Traditional
Liturgy but that its members are active in their own parishes and dynamic in the
corporal works of mercy -as has ever been the practice of the Catholic Church. I
reproduce one paragraph here:

While Juventutem is geared
towards youth who are attached to or attracted to the Traditional Liturgy
(which we seek to promote), our group, by working with the homeless,
fundraising for the Developing World and active in our parishes, illustrates
the fact that the vision of such young people is much wider than is supposed by
those who disparagingly speak of devotees of the Traditional Mass as ‘odd’ or
‘eccentric’; as ‘engaged in a passing fad’ or as ‘only interested in Latin and
Lace’. Devotees of the Traditional Mass are in fact people with a social
conscience involved in everyday parish life who simply value the Tradition of
the Church and wish to see it promoted. Read the whole thing here.

This
sounds a very rounded and active group to me and deserves to be applauded for
that fullness, and despite the fact that Andrew has been mainly a background
voice so far, I am proud of his efforts and achievements in all of this, as I
am of Paul who has entered into it despite the pressures of running his own
business and moving the family home. May God bless all our young people,
especially our Juventutem chapters in the North and the South of this Diocese
of Hexham & Newcastle.

I should finish with a poster for the Missa Cantata arranged by the group for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception...